Vanished
by Ueste
Summary: It's fifty years after their deaths, and Unmei Doumeki finds an odd spirit in the old amulet of his cousin's. Because Watanuki cannot die, only vanish. Chapter 2 up!
1. Prologue: The Charm

**AN:** A new year, a new story!

Has anyone else noticed that Yuuko never talks about Watanuki actually dieing? She says he will 'vanish forever' or something similar. Now I know it's translated and in Japanese it could all be one and the same, but what if Watanuki couldn't die? What if he'd just . . . vanish?

**Pairings:** NOT DouWata. Not WatanukiXHimawari. Just no. No WatanukiX anybody, actually. This is friendship only, except for a light smattering of ClowXYuuko I threw in because I'm evil that way.

**Warnings:** Extreme angst, character deaths. Possible attempted suicide in future chapters (if they ever decide to exist), I know that's a touchy subject for many.

**Disclaimer:** If I owned XXXholic, it would never get beyond the first chapter. So let's be glad I don't, ne?

* * *

**Vanished**

**by Ueste**

**Prologue: The Charm**

"Watanuki-kun--"

_No_

"Watanuki-kun, Watanuki-kun!" The twins chorused.

_Stop, Please!_

Watanuki pressed his hands over his ears, trying to block out the name. No, that wasn't his name, she had never called him that before, only Himawari-chan had --

_Oh, God._

_Himawari-chan laughing with him, her smile's radiance blinding him._

_Himawari-chan trying out his bento, clapping her hands together happily at the taste._

_Himawari-chan worried over Doumeki._

"Watanuki-kun -- "

"Don't call me that." His voice sounded dead. The pale skin of his hands before him looked dead. He felt dead. Oh, God, why wasn't he_ dead_.

The pain across his face made him look up. Yuuko stood in front of him, a fan open in her hand. The ends of the frame were tinged red. Watanuki raised a hand to his cheek, and it came away bloody.

Yuuko didn't explain the slap. It was enough to get Watanuki's attention.

"You still owe him Watanuki," She said.

"Yuuko-san, please. Let me join them, let me see them again!"

"You can't die, Watanuki-kun. Your soul will never pass onto the far plane. You cannot join them, you would only vanish.

"Make me vanish then, Yuuko, please! I don't want this anymore!"

"I can't"

"I don't care who's paid the price, it's my life, if I want to vanish, it's my wish. You must grant it!"

"Putting aside the fact that I will never take the weight of taking your life, there is an imbalance. You still owe him."

He didn't think he could take him bentos anymore.

_Their last lunch, Domeki shoveling food, Himiwari-chan laughing when Watanuki got mad._

_"Watanuki-kun and Doumeki-kun are such good friends!"_

Watanuki had long before stopped bothering to wipe away the tears pouring down his face. Yuuko's face was blurry before him.

"One as pure as he will not stay dead for long, Watanuki-kun."

It took a moment for the boy to process this statement, and when he did the hope in his eyes made Yuuko want to cry. She had not cried in a very long time.

"Reincarnation does not work that way. Even if his spirit is reborn, it will not be Doumeki-kun that you repay your debt to." Oh, she knew that far too well.

Watanuki watched floor as another salty drop fell on the dead wood. His voice seemed to have hidden in the walls of his throat, words coming out slowly and bloodily.

"How . . . can I?"

Yuuko held up a small object.

_Doumeki, standing exhausted, waiting for him. Handing Yuuko a charm as payment for her help. Ignoring Watanuki's protests._

"Your price?"

"All that you have left."

Watanuki unhesitatingly touched the small charm. He had nothing left that he wanted.

Yuuko stayed silent as her assistant's body vanished away in a swirl of the charm's magic. She carefully wrapped the new spirit-vessel in a warded cloth. Mokona would deliver it to the Doumeki temple.

. . .V a N I s h E D . . .

She lay back on the porch, looking up at this world's stars. "Those children . . . they're failing, Clow. He is winning, Hitsuzen has turned." The stars were unaccountably blurry, so she shifted her gaze to the bottom of her sake glass. "I'll becoming to join you soon, Clow."

It was a lie. Just like it had been a lie when they'd first kissed. It had been a lie when she said she was his. A lie when he pronounced them soul mates. When he'd said he'd wait for her.

When she told him he wouldn't have to wait long.

Lies. Because the worlds would always need a Dimension Witch, and Clow could never read his own damn human heart.

* * *

**AN: **One of my best, if I do say so myself, so now is your chance to review and tell me just how wrong I am! Please?

I have plans for other chapters, but I'm horrible when it comes to writing multi-chapter fics. Consider this a one-shot for now.


	2. Chapter 1: The Box

Disclaimer: I don't own XXXholic. Unmei and his parents, however, are completely mine!

Warnings: Spoilers for volumnes seven and eight, the Spider's Grudge arc. ( Future chapters may contain spoilers for all of the books out in America: volumnes 1-10. Be warned!)

**Chapter One: The Box**

Unmei heaved the carefully labeled box onto his bed with a strained 'umph.' He wondered why it was that old books always seemed heavier than new ones. Like they'd gained weight with age or something. Probably all the layers of dust.

Unmei carefully pealed back the tape holding the box shut. He'd learned to refrain from damaging even the most ordinary object. Who knew what history was hidden within them? The box must've been nearly as old as the books in it. He wondered how long they'd been packed away.

The temple had been in his family for generations. He'd been able to trace it all the way to his great-great-grandfather, though he was almost sure it dated back even further. But now the temple had been declared structurally unsound. It had been closed down, and before long would be condemned.

His parents had been empting out the storerooms that day. Most everything had gone into a dumpster, despite Unmei's protests. He'd been forced to watch as his parents lightly tossed away decades of their family's past. But this box . . . Unmei had sneaked inside a room after his parents left. The empty shelves cried out at having been relieved of their long valued weight, and Unmei had simply stood in the emptiness for a while. But up on a top shelf, back where he could barely see it from the ground (Unmei thanked God that he was taller than either of his parents,) this one box had been sitting in the shadows, waiting for him to find it.

Unmei coughed as the flaps on the box finally came open. He waited a moment for the dust to settle, and started turning through the box's contents.

Mostly there were books, like the box's label had said. There were also some knickknacks and a large cloth bag. Unmei pulled out the books first and gently turned the cover of one. _Doumeki Shizuka_ was scrawled messily on the first page. Unmei grinned. Shizuka had been his grandfather's cousin. He died at a young age, without any kids, so the temple had passed into Unmei's branch of the family. _Nobody_ knew anything about Shizuka! Unmei had spent a whole semester last year trying to drudge up _something_ about the man's life, but it was like he'd existed in another world. No government records, no newspaper articles, no surviving friends. The most Unmei had found was a few school records for Archery Club. But here was a whole box full of his ancestor's things! Unmei hurriedly glanced at the rest of the books. A few were schoolbooks, also containing Shizuka's name across the front. One book looked even older than the rest, and when Unmei carefully lifted up the pages, he found it mostly blank. There were only bits and pieces of words left, as if something had eaten the ink, and the Kana used was very old. Unmei could only understand a few of the words that were there.

The other books seemed like odd choices for a highschool boy. There was _Folklore and Traditions_, _The Book of Deciphering Spells, Reversals and Wards,_ and a few books written in a language Unmei didn't know. He gently trailed a hand over the books' covers, feeling the age and knowledge inside of them. He pulled away to grab his binder from under the bed, flipping open to the tab marked with Shizuka's name. There were only a few pages in this section. He turned to a clean one and began to write.

_Shizuka seems interested in the supernatural, as evidenced by books on the subject found among his possessions. Reason for interest not yet known. He--_

Unmei stopped when he heard a car door close outside. He ran to look out of his window. His parents were unpacking groceries from the trunk. Unmei hurried back to pack the books back in their box. He pulled a chair over to his closet, and climbed up to reach the treasure-hole hidden there. The wall was oddly thick, and Unmei had cut out a pocket to hide his artifacts in. He hated to think what would happen if his parents found the box, let alone some of the other things he'd snuck away from the temple over the years.

"Unmei!" The shout came from downstairs. Unmei took a moment to slow his excited breathing. He forced himself to walk calmly down into the kitchen, trying to look as if he'd been doing nothing more interesting than homework.

"Unmei, darling, there you are!" His mother enveloped him in a hug, her voluptuous sleeves clinging to his body. She swirled away from him in a moment, plucking a book out of one of the grocery bags. "We knew how sad you were at having to throw out all of those old boxes, so your father and I picked this up for you!"

Unmei absently took the book, glancing at the title. _Planning for a successful future_. "Ah, right. Thanks, mom." She was dancing around the room, placing the groceries in cupboards and carefully ensconcing fruit and vegetables in the fridge.

"Hey, mom?" Unmei asked.

"Yes darling?" She was lifting eggs out of one of the paper bags.

"I was wondering if you or Dad could drive me to the library? I have some research to do for school."

"Hmm, what class, honey?" His mom stayed focused on the groceries.

"History. I have to –"

"Oh, darling, you know how busy your father and I are. Really, you'll just have to use the computer this time."

"But I can't trust anything on –"

"I'm sure your teacher won't mind a few inaccuracies, honey. You _are_ only fifteen, you can't be expected to do everything perfectly!"

"But--" It was too late; she'd already swept out to meet his father bringing in another load of bags.

. . . VaNIshED . . .

Unmei sank exhaustedly onto his bed. He glanced at the clock: 3:30. It had taken him forever to write his history report. No, writing it was quick. It had taken him forever to validate all of the web pages before he used them. Sometimes he really hated his own scruples against using something false.

But now he could sleep, and the faster he fell asleep the more quickly he could look through the rest of that box tomorrow.

_Unmei glanced around his room. It was still dark out, but for some reason he didn't have any trouble seeing. There was a book lying open on his desk. He walked over to look at it; it was the one with all of the missing words. He turned through the pages again, thinking that he could sometimes see the shadows of words hidden there, waiting to be read if he could only pull them out from the inner depths of the paper._

_"Sorry about that" A voice behind him spoke. Unmei turned to see a young man, maybe a few years older than him. He had skin as pale as the moon and midnight-dark hair and the most amazing mismatched eyes and--_

_"That was my fault, you see" he gestured at the book with an apologetic smile. "I shut it in a box with a book worm, and it ate all of the words. But," The man looked at him calculatingly, though his eyes still held amazing kindness. "I think you might soon be able to read it anyways."_

Unmei opened his eyes, studying the ceiling tiles for a few moments. His dream had been oddly vivid. More like a vision than a dream. Sometimes, when he handled something really old, it would open up to him, and he'd just . . .see what had once happened to it. Like it was one of his own memories. The dream was like that. But, well, he never saw anything he could check on. No way to know if what he saw was real.

When he was little, he used to tell his parents about what he knew. They'd laugh and say how darling it was that he had such a wonderful imagination. He never made them believe that he told anything more than stories.

Unmei huffed and turned over, telling himself to go to sleep. He had a box waiting for him in the morning.


End file.
